The computer industry is based on a premise that all users can be served by a single basic user interface paradigm. While each manufacturer has a different interpretation of what that paradigm should be, there is some consistency in the current approach based on a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that is accessed with a keyboard and mouse. While this works for many people, there are those for whom it presents major accessibility problems. For example, many physically disabled people are unable to use the keyboard or mouse, blind people cannot see the objects displayed on a screen, deaf people cannot hear alarms or spoken messages, and learning disabled or cognitively impaired people may be confused by the visual metaphors that are used.
Traditional methods for making information technology (IT) equipment accessible to individuals with disabilities required hardware or software modifications to specific IT devices to make them accessible to specific users. While these user-specific solutions worked well in many environments, they were usually costly to implement and required building the IT equipment from the ground up for each user and each work situation. Version obsolescence is an ongoing problem because new or updated versions of existing software invariably break existing access solutions. Furthermore, different solutions are required for each computer platform and each version of its operating system. In short, these solutions enabled a person with special needs to work with a constrained range of equipment and software but did not give them the freedom to move about.